Cult count on underage wives varies

Houston Chronicle:

Ten "girls" taken into custody by Texas Child Protective Services have convinced the agency they are really adults and more are expected to be similarly reclassified this week, weakening the agency's claim that dozens of underage girls were forced by a polygamist sect to have sex with older men.

On Tuesday, six more "girls" were deemed adults, including 27-year-old Leona Allred, whose lawyer insisted CPS knew from the beginning that her client was an adult.

"My client showed them the same documents they showed them from the beginning: a valid Arizona driver's license and a birth certificate," said Andrea Sloan.

Two others, Merilyn Jeffs Keate and Sarah Cathleen Jessop Nielsen, were reclassified as adults Monday as five judges began sifting through the cases of all the children taken from the Yearning For Zion Ranch in West Texas.

Last week, the agency acknowledged that two "girls" who were among the more than 460 children they removed from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' ranch were really 18 and 22.

The revelations about the true ages of some sect members are coming to light during custody status hearings being held at the Tom County courthouse over the next three weeks.

But also Tuesday, two cases came up that revealed girls as young as 15 and 16 had been united in spiritual marriages with older men.

One of those girls, now 19, was ruled an adult by the courts but not before she said in a conference call to the court that she could have been no older than 16 when her daughter was born on Aug. 19, 2005.

And in another courtroom, information gleaned from the records of a 17-year-old indicated she had to have been 15 when her first child was born.

CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins denied any suggestion that the agency's massive undertaking may be on the verge of collapse, adding: "The numbers aren't important to us."

He said CPS was stymied by the conflicting and false information given by families, which made establishing ages nearly impossible. He added that his agency never intentionally misled anyone when it said it believed it had more than two dozen females who were being sexually abused as minors.

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When the raid occurred several of the mothers gave misleading answers to questions about their age and even their last names. I think many did this to create confusion that would make it more difficult for CPS to do its job. Even with that confusion it is clear that some of the mothers were underage when their children were born. Sowing the paternity of those children could lead to prosecutions for statutory rape. Those births also justify the concern that other children were in an environment that condoned and encourage pedophilia with underage girls. That could be used by a court to uphold removing the children to foster care.